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Out of the 23 families, 10 families including us left for Changsha, Hunan. at 6:30 am today. 10 families left for Chong Qing (another city in Hunan). 3 families went to 3 other cities (special needs adoptions). Changsha is the capital city of Hunan. It's also where we have a lot of family on my father's side that I'll be meeting for the first time!
It was a short plane flight (less than an hour) and I must admit this whole day was a blur as I am composing this a few days later. Need I say that we had nothing on our minds except baby, baby, baby--give us our baby!!! When we arrived at the Dolton Hotel we had just a little while to get freshened up until we were to leave for the Civil Affairs Office at 2 pm for the most exciting moment of our lives! There had been a change from the original itinerary which stated we were to receive the babies in our hotel rooms. I then heard that morning that it was changed to an office in the hotel. It was then changed again to the Civil Affairs Office. Don't really care where it happens--just want the baby! It suddenly hit me as we were leaving the Dolton Hotel to head for the Civil Affairs Office the magnitude of what we were about to do and I almost lost it--I got very choked up and emotional. Marianne told me I'd better stay away from her or else we were going to have a group cryfest!
I'm amazed we were able to function at all but somehow we made it to the Civil Affairs Office where we stood in the hallway in a queue anxiously awaiting...yes, you all know by now...the babies! There was another large group in the main room already so we were told another last minute changed which was that we were to line up in the hallway and they would bring the babies out to us one by one and then we were to take the baby inside the larger waiting area where the other families were already bonding with their babies.
And need I say anymore...WE GOT OUR BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The first day of an incredible journey that will last the rest of our lives! And life will never be the same again.....(and we're so glad for it!)
Further postscripts on this eventful day:
We met Emma's caretaker and the Director of the Yi Yang Institute where Emma came from. The caretaker brought the gifts we had sent Emma on her birthday including the talking Pooh bear, Panda, photo album, birthday cards, cameras, tape recorder with cassettes of Chinese children's songs. We were so delighted and grateful that she had gotten these items and that they were kept with her. Pooh bear came in very handy helping to get Emma calmed down. She seemed extremely traumatized when we first got her. She was wailing a storm and wouldn't stop. We asked the caretaker if this was normal for her and she said "No"--that she was a very well-behaved baby who rarely cried. We then talked about how traumatizing it must have been for her to ride in a bumpy hot bus for over 4-5 hours to get to us. We then also discovered that she hadn't had anything to eat or drink that whole time so no wonder she was cranky!!! We asked if she had brought a bottle we could feed her with and the caretaker said "Yes" so we asked for it. She went back out to the bus to get it. She had also left us a bag of rice cereal and infant formula for us to feed her for a couple weeks worth.
When the caretaker brought back the bottle, we were really surprised at how big the hole they cut into the nipple. We had been warned that the Chinese orphanage babies weren't used to drinking from normal nipples because the openings had been made larger. We were told to use a swiss army knife to widen the opening but we had not idea that the opening was actually a large hole cut into it about 7 mm in diameter. The water just gushes out of it! We were so glad to have a sample to follow because we would've had no idea how big to make the hole and would have never have dreamed to make it that big.
Emma downed the water bottle as if she hadn't drank in days. She literally gulped the entire thing down. She was definitely completely dehydrated. I suspected that most of the babies were very dehydrated and hungry upon arrival.
It was rather harried for awhile until we finally got that bottle of water. Then things began to look up. She was incredibly hot, sweaty, and bothered. I didn't blame her--I'd be crying up a storm too if I'd gone thru what she had. I started singing to her and talking to her with Pooh bear and she eventually calmed down and became very comforted. This is also when she started clinging to me in the most heartwrenching manner and I knew we had bonded. She hung on to my collar for dear life as if she were scared to death that this new person she was trusting was going to leave her too. She kept touching my hands and looking at her hands next to mine and finding comfort in the similar skin color and appearance. She definitely seemed to be registering a comfort level in my being similar to her and her caretaker.
She would not let Steve hold her at all. When I tried to hand her off she would start wailing like a banshee again. We decided she'd had enough trauma for one day so we decided that I would hold her for the rest of the day. That night she was only able to fall asleep with me laying next to her holding her in my arms. Once asleep, we put her in the crib and she was fine. Ahhhhhh, we have connected Houston.
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